polyrhythm
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Time Flying By: Notes On Dawn of Midi At The Park Avenue Armory
“Up close one may see only dots, but stand back and the undulating image is revealed.” – Dawn of Midi Last week I went to (finally) see Dawn of Midi perform at the Park Avenue Armory. The group is nominally a piano-bass-drums jazz trio, but the music they make on their debut album Dysnomia, is Continue reading
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Polyrhythms, negative space, circuits of meaning: making sense through Dawn of Midi’s “Dysnomia”
My essay on the music of Dawn of Midi, “Polyrhythms, negative space, circuits of meaning: making sense through Dawn of Midi’s Dysnomia”, is now available in the journal Popular Music. You can read an abstract of the essay here. Continue reading
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On The Drumming Of Tony Allen
In his memoir Tony Allen: An Autobiography of the Master Drummer of Afrobeat (co-authored with Michael Veal, Duke University Press, 2013), the eminent Nigerian drummer recalls the influence of American jazz innovators on his own musicianship. It was in the playing of the African Americans such as Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, and Max Roach that Continue reading
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On Rhythmic Instabilities And Brand New Feelings: DJ Rashad’s “Feelin””
“The technology’s so on point now: we can sample almost anything now.” – DJ Spinn One of the talked about music releases of 2012 is DJ Rashad’s Teklife Vol.1: Welcome to the Chi. Rashad is a Chicago musician who makes music to accompany a dance style known as footwork. Footwork is characterized by its hyper Continue reading
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On Perception And Playing A Polyrhythm
A polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of more than one rhythm. I find polyrhythms endlessly interesting, mainly because they play with our perceptions, especially our sense of what is foreground and what is background. In this way, polyrhythms are the aural equivalent of those optical illusions you may remember from Psychology 101, such as the Continue reading
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